


i can tell you my love for you will still be strong

by bellawritess



Series: first bass [2]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Boys of Summer as a plot point, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, Luke Hemmings & Calum Hood Friendship, M/M, Projection fic, college acappella AU, i lost sight of everything else, i was gonna post angst tonight and then the single dropped and, logical friend luke hemmings, so the angst will have to wait, the iconic first bass group chat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26524375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellawritess/pseuds/bellawritess
Summary: “Holy shit holy shit holy shit,” Luke says breathlessly, and physically wrenches Calum’s headphones off his head. “It’s out it’s out it’s out!”“What is?”Luke stares at him. “The fucking single, you idiot! Boys of Summer! First Bass!”
Relationships: Luke Hemmings & Calum Hood, Luke Hemmings/Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford/Calum Hood
Series: first bass [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1928686
Comments: 13
Kudos: 38





	i can tell you my love for you will still be strong

**Author's Note:**

> SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO guess whose ACTUAL acappella group released a single at midnight!!!!!! and guess who drank a coffee at midnight and then listened to her single 66 times in a row!!!!!!!!!! while writing this!!!!!!!!!
> 
> some things to consider whilst reading this: i was literally insane while writing it so if its terrible and/or super incoherent thatll be why. also this takes place some ambiguous time after the first fic but definitely second semester of that year, and there's some existing canon in my head that i never wrote into any Full Fics to post but all you need to know is that calum has told michael he loves him, like, Many Times, and michael has never said it back <3 
> 
> i think its incredibly sexy of me to post this fic at quarter to 4am i really think that's on brand for me anyway shoutout to the club for not somehow hacking the discord code and forcibly removing me from the chat just for being FUCKING insane you guys are stars also shoutout to [peyton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/woahsos) for saying acappella au when i asked what 'verse i should write more fic in. that was the answer i was looking for and you are a legend. third shoutout to [ainslee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashisonthefloor) because i seriously am crying laughing just THINKING about the fucking DRUGS thing LKHSFGSLFGNKBVM okay ENOUGH of this please read the fic
> 
> title from boys of summer by don henley or the ataris if you prefer

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit,” Luke says breathlessly, and physically wrenches Calum’s headphones off his head. “It’s out it’s out it’s out!”

“What is?”

Luke stares at him. “The fucking single, you idiot! Boys of Summer! First Bass!”

Calum almost falls off his chair. “ _Fuck_ me, that’s today? Now?”

“YES,” Luke shouts, and pushes Calum out of the way to pull up Spotify on his laptop. When he types in First Bass it’s there, the first (and basically only) result — _The Boys of Summer_ , by First Bass. “Oh my fucking _God,_ oh holy fuck.” And he hits play.

The beatboxing and the melody kick off quietly through Calum’s laptop speakers. Calum slams the volume up button on his computer until the sound is filling the room. It’s midnight, past quiet hours, but Calum doesn’t care, because this is — this is _his_ acappella group. This is his fucking group, and that’s Rian beatboxing, and that’s Ashton singing _nobody on the road, nobody on the beach_ , and if he listens closely he can even hear himself, him and Jack, lifting the lows of the song with those bass 2 notes. Luke is hyperventilating next to Calum’s ear.

“It sounds so fucking good,” Luke says, and Calum turns to look and Luke's got this stupid, ridiculous grin, and then Calum realizes he’s _also_ got a stupid ridiculous grin, and he decides that just this once, they can have stupid grins.

He pulls up the group chat, which is _exploding._

**_First Bass sluts and whores_ **

**_12:01 a.m._ **

**Father Of All Basses:** YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 **Father Of All Basses:** WE SOUND SO SICK

 **JB:** LISTEN TO THAT SEXY SEXY MR IRWIN 

**Mr. Bass:** stream the shit out of this guys!!!! pay for our merch!!!!

 **sexy motherfucker:** holy SHIT this is so good

 **Tommo:** ashton you sound so sick so fucking good

 **harry/haz/hazza/harold:** this actually sounds dead wicked

 **Zack: @Liam** the mixing is [OK emoji]

 **Liam:** _panlist.jpg_

 **Liam:** this is the side everyone’s voices are panned to! in case you want to listen for yourself

 **Zayn:** oh aces

 **harry/haz/hazza/harold:** louis you sound exceptional in my left ear

 **luke:** ASHTON

Calum turns again and looks at Luke, who’s now on his phone. “You fucking sap,” he says, but he’s still grinning like an idiot.

“That’s my fucking boyfriend, Calum!” Luke says, with uncontrolled excitement. “And he sounds fucking hot!”

“Alright, keep it PG.” Calum returns to the chat as the song continues playing, building to the full chorus, and types a message.

**calum: @sexy motherfucker** bass 1s sounding hot

 **Niall:** thanks lad <3

 **calum:** not you

 **Niall:** i think youll find i am a bass 1

 **JB:** _tears.jpg_

 **JB:** alex cant type because he is CRYING

 **Father Of All Basses:** IM NOT CRYNNG IM JSUT PROUD OF YOU GUYS 

**Zayn: @Mr. Bass** you seriously sound sick mate

“You should call him,” Calum tells Luke, peering over his phone to watch Luke type _@zayn get your own man_. “Very mature.” Ashton sings _remember how I made you scream_ and Calum feels his grin stretch further across his face. If it gets any bigger he’s sure it’ll just break his entire face in two, and he thinks he might be willing to make that sacrifice. “Oh my _fucking God this sounds so cool._ ”

“Calum!” Luke says emphatically. “We have a single out! On Spotify!”

“Okay, be cool, man! I’m listening to it too!”

“I know, but isn’t that just so fucking cool?”

Calum has to concede that this is up there among the coolest things he’s ever done, or been part of. It feels weirdly profound, but in a good way; Calum’s officially left his footprint. If he never does anything else with his entire life, he can at least say he’s got a song on Spotify. Technically, he does. Well, it’s one-thirteenth his, but that’s enough.

“Go put it on a loop on your laptop,” he says. “Put it on mute, I’ll keep playing it. Get those streams up.”

“I’m gonna call Ashton,” Luke says, as if Calum hadn’t _literally_ suggested that fifteen seconds ago.

“You do that,” Calum says, figuring he should probably call Michael. He’ll just wait until the song finishes the first time. There’s another two minutes, so Calum lets it play through, then mutes his volume, leaving the song to loop silently. 

Before he can even turn his phone on, though, the screen lights up on its own with a FaceTime request. _Sex God Michael Clifford._ Somehow he manages to grin even wider. Across the room he hears Ashton’s voice say, “Luke! —” before it’s cut off by Luke putting headphones in. Well, Luke’s more considerate than Calum. Calum accepts the call and props his phone up against his laptop screen. 

“YOU SOUND HOT,” Michael announces the moment his face appears on the screen. Calum rolls his eyes.

“You can barely hear me,” he says. “ _You_ sound hot.”

“You know who sounds hot? _Ashton,_ ” Michael says fervently. Then, “I mean, not, in, like — like, you know what I mean.”

“Really, Mikey? You’re hitting on Ashton while his boyfriend is _literally_ in the room with me?”

“Fuck you, I stand by it. Ashton sounds _hot_.”

“Ashton sounds hot,” Calum agrees, and his stupid face hurts from smiling. “Hey Michael, we have a _fucking single out._ ”

“I know!” Michael shouts gleefully. “This is the greatest day of my entire life!”

“You must have dreamt about this moment for years, huh,” Calum says. Michael’s religious loyalty to First Bass, even before he’d been old enough to worry about uni, is impossible to avoid; most days he’s wearing some kind of First Bass merch, and when he’s not, the stickers are always on proud display on his water bottle and laptop. If Michael one day revealed to Calum a First Bass tattoo, Calum is one hundred percent sure he wouldn’t be surprised. 

“Don’t make fun of me,” Michael says. 

“I’m not making fun! It’s cute,” Calum says honestly. “This is fucking dope, Michael. There’s a song on the internet forever now and _we’re on it._ ”

“We’re on it,” Michael echoes, a little breathless. “Okay. I have to go and listen to it a hundred million more times, just wanted to see your face. I love you so fucking much, talk to you later, goodbye!”

Just before he hangs up, Calum glimpses a look of panic, and then the call drops, and if Calum had felt pure exhilaration before, now his heart has stopped entirely, and his entire body is nothing but electricity and ice, all the way out to his fingertips. 

“What?” he says out loud to his lock screen. “Uh, holy shit? Luke?” Luke is still on call with Ashton, raving about how amazing Ashton sounds. Which is true and all, but Calum makes the executive decision that this is a priority. He crosses to Luke and waves a hand in front of his face. Luke takes an earbud out and grins up at him.

“Ashton says you sound great,” he tells Calum. 

“Sick, he sounds awesome,” Calum says. “Michael told me he loves me.” 

Luke’s eyes widen. “Gonna deal with this right now,” he tells Ashton on the screen, and Calum can hear the echoes of Ashton saying _fucking finally, should’ve done it sooner —_ and then Luke says, “Love you, love you, you sound amazing, goodbye,” and he’s hung up. “Seriously?” he says to Calum, still grinning. “That’s fucking awesome, Calum, _finally._ ”

“What if he didn’t mean it,” Calum frets. “What if he just said it because of the adrenaline? I would have. I’d say it to anyone. I think I’m in love with Alex right now.” 

“If you weren’t, there’d be a problem,” Luke says, “since Alex is hot, but also, just because he said it from the adrenaline doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean it. It probably means he’s been thinking it for a long time and was too much of a little bitch to say it. So you should probably be grateful for the single, actually, or else he might never have admitted to it.”

Calum can’t feel his fingers. “He knows I love him, right?”

“Well, you’ve said it like at least a hundred times,” Luke says, “so I would hope so. Or else he’s not listening to you, in which case you should probably break up.”

“You’re not being helpful!”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, bro! Call him back and ask if he meant it!”

“No, that’s a trap, he’ll have to say yes even if he didn’t.”

“Okay, but he fucking meant it, so stop freaking out, Calum. Like, just because he’s never _said_ it before, doesn’t mean he hasn’t _shown_ it. If you think he doesn’t love you, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Calum swallows. That’s easy for Luke to say; it’s not his relationship on the line. His phone starts buzzing; startled, he drops it onto the floor, where it lands face down on the rug.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Calum mutters, retrieving his phone and glancing at it. “This boy is going to send me to an early grave.”

“Fucking answer it,” Luke says, so Calum does, returning to his own desk as he does. He glances back, but Luke has put his earbuds back in, casting an encouraging smile to Calum. It strikes Calum as strangely respectful; for someone as invested in Calum’s relationship as Luke is, it’s pretty big of him to actively not eavesdrop on this conversation.

Unless he is eavesdropping, and is just pretending not to, but Calum would like to believe that Luke wouldn’t do that. (He totally, absolutely would do that.)

“Hi,” Calum says as soon as he’s answered the call. 

“Hi,” Michael says, and in the background Calum can hear the faintest strains of their single playing. That makes him smile a bit; Michael couldn’t even bear to stop listening to it for long enough to call Calum. “So, I feel like I kind of dropped that bomb on you.”

“A little bit.” Calum chews on his lip. “You can, like, take it back if —”

“I don’t want to take it back,” Michael says in a rush. “I meant it. Obviously I love you. I mean, I just — I was sort of — I didn’t think — God, fuck. It doesn’t even matter. Now you know.” 

“You’re saying it like it’s this crime you’ve just confessed to,” Calum says wryly. “I already love you, you know. So if it _is_ a crime you’d have gone down with me either way.”

Michael laughs. “I know, I know. Sorry, I just — I don’t know. I was worried. It’s kind of a big deal.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I already knew,” Calum tells him, and thinks about every time Michael had kissed him on the cheek when he’d come to rehearsal with shoulders slumped, about every time he’d brought Calum Starbucks without asking for his order first, because he’d already had it memorized; about Michael coming to Calum’s football matches despite his vehement insistence that “the outdoors don’t agree with me, Calum, I’m serious,” about Michael freaking out quietly to Calum the night before the day of solo auditions for a new First Bass arrangement because God, he’d wanted it so bad, and the look of pure elation on his face when he’d grinned at Calum after Alex had announced the solo was going to Michael; about how every time Calum searches for Michael’s eyes in any room, he finds them already watching Calum, lips unmistakably turned upward.

“Good,” Michael says. “Well, now that I’ve said it I probably won’t stop, so. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Calum says. “Now go listen to Boys of Summer a hundred million times. Pay for our merch. I love you.”

“Is it stupid to say that I’d rather be talking to you?” Michael says, blushing. Calum feels himself blush too. Michael fucking Clifford.

“ _Yes_ ,” Calum says. “You are _singing_ on a _single_ on _Spotify_ , oh my God. Boyfriends die, but this single is forever. Leave me alone to bask in it.”

“You’re a terrible boyfriend.”

“I try,” Calum says. “Michael, I seriously love you, but I have only heard Ashton’s sexy voice sing Boys of Summer _once_ and that is _not_ enough times.”

“Okay, okay,” Michael huffs. “I can’t actually hear the words anymore, you know? Just the _do do do do, do do do do_. Boys of Summer has been ruined for me.”

“But it’s about _knowing_ Ashton sounds good,” Calum says. “And your super hot boyfriend, who’s pretty much carrying the bass 2s on his back.”

“He is,” Michael agrees, and before he even opens his mouth again Calum knows what he’s going to say. “Jack is talented like that.”

“Okay, fuck you,” Calum says, and hangs up on Michael mid-laugh. He’s barely reached for the volume of his laptop to turn it back on when his phone vibrates with a text.

 **Sex God Michael Clifford:** FOR THE RECORD I WAS JOKING, you sound super hot and i am gonna make out with you SO hard when i see you tomorrow

Calum grins to himself. Then he cranks Boys of Summer all the way up and turns around in his chair to look at Luke, who, hearing the song overpowering whatever’s in his earbuds, takes them out and returns Calum’s gaze.

“So?”

“So, nothing,” Calum says, although the stupid grin is back in full force, and he knows he’s transparent as fuck to Luke. “So we have a fucking single out.”

“We sure the fuck do,” Luke says, and _his_ stupid grin is also back. “Going places.”

Calum feels warm, warm, warm. He and Luke turn back to their computers in wordless sync, and Calum closes his eyes and lets _I thought I knew what love was, what did I know_ wash over him, thinking that maybe he knows better than Don Henley in just this one thing.

**Author's Note:**

> im pretty sure my own acappella group's single is currently my third most listened to song on spotify and it literally came out four hours ago so what does that tell you about me as a person :)) anyway im on tumblr [@clumsyclifford](http://clumsyclifford.tumblr.com/) come hang out love you guys i think i should probably go to bed soon so. goodnight everyone


End file.
